Two Friends--One Deceased--Reconnect Through Childhood Letters

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When Laura learns her best friend Katharine has been found dead in a dumpster, Laura begins to reevaluate her own life. Finding her and Katharine's childhood letters allows Laura to evaluate the choices she has made and reconsider her future.

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Often words of love and appreciation go unsaid and memories are lost, but when one woman finds the letters of her deceased best friend, she is able to reconstruct their relationship and reinvent her own life in Linda Overman's poignant novel "Letters Between Us" (ISBN 9781891386626, Plain View Press, 2008).

Thirty-nine-year-old Laura is not having an easy time in her life. Her mother is suffering from dementia and her once happy marriage is on the rocks. Then, she is devastated to learn her childhood best friend, Katharine, has been found dead in a trash bin following a picnic with fellow hospitalized psychiatric patients. After attending the funeral, Laura begins to explore a collection of diaries and letters from Katharine's life. Deciding to read their correspondence to each other, Laura takes refuge in a hotel room where she will not be disturbed.

Laura finds that the letters trigger memories of her and Katharine's childhood together. She also begins to see a side of Katharine she never knew. Neither girl had a stable childhood. Laura was promiscuous and experimented heavily with drugs and alcohol. Katharine's parents were abusive and alcoholic, which resulted in Katharine acquiring psychotic behavior and ultimately being hospitalized in mental health facilities. By that point, Laura no longer recognized her friend.

Laura not only learns information about Katharine she did not know before, but she also reevaluates her own life and comes to an understanding of why certain events happened such as the failure of her marriage. Ultimately, she becomes self-aware and ready to tackle the issues currently facing her.

"Letters Between Us" will leave readers contemplative and appreciative of their own friendships. The story is realistic and moving without being sentimental. The use of letters and diaries brings the characters' voices to life so readers feel as if they are listening to real people revealing their experiences. Overman says of her novel, "Reading should help us to transcend our peripatetic lives and in the process guide us to learn something more about our world and ourselves. I trust reading Letters Between Us will do the same for the reader."

About the Author
Linda Rader Overman's work encompasses fiction and nonfiction, combining multifaceted elements that include photographs, narrative portraits, images, texts, personal and social history, poetry, letters, and diaries. Overman was born in Hollywood, California in 1951, and she graduated from Hollywood High in 1968. She had a nine-year career at KNBC-TV, where she met her husband; they have a son and daughter. Overman returned to school to receive a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. and M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her work appears in many anthologies and magazines. She teaches English at California State University, Northridge. Overman is currently working on a sequel to "Letters Between Us."